China’s War With Japan 1937-1945 by Rana Mitter

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Chinese children wave Japanese flags in a 1937 propaganda pictureKimura/Pix Inc./Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

Jonathan Fenby

Last updated at 12:01AM, July 1 2013

Cataclysmic as it was in itself, with anywhere from 14 to 20 million Chinese
deaths, the war between China and Japan from 1937 to 1945 has a broader
place in history that resonates powerfully — and dangerously — to this day.
The conflict between the rising power of Japan and the declining empire of
the Middle Kingdom began with the defeat by the Asian newcomer of the empire
of two thousand years in 1894-5. After adding victory over Russia, Japan
grabbed Manchuria from Nationalist China and, seven years later, launched
the war that is the subject of this book.